Many beverages, such as soft drinks and beer, are packaged and transported in metallic cans. These cans, whether they be of the three-piece, seamed type or the two-piece, drawn and ironed type, are generally right cylindrical in shape.
In many circumstances, can bodies are produced by a can manufacturer and shipped to the soft drink producer or brewery where they are filled, sealed and distributed. Cylindrical cans are not nestable into one another. Thus, in transporting the empty cans from the can manufacturer to the beverage producer, the cans are stacked one upon another in vertical columns, taking up substantially an equal amount of space as do the filled cans. Clearly, much of this space is taken up by air.
Tapered containers, which may be nested into one another, are also known. Typically, molded plastic tumblers and glasses formed both of glass and metal are formed having tapered sides so that the containers may be stacked into one another, thus saving large amounts of space in storage during transport of the containers.
The drawn and ironed can forming process has now taken over 50% of the market for cans in the beverage field. However, a limitation in the known drawn and ironed process has required the cans formed by this process have a generally right cylindrical side wall profile, thus eliminating the possibility of a nestable container. It would be, therefore, advantageous to produce a nestable container by means of the drawn and ironed method. Such a can would have all of the advantages of a two-piece can; no seams are present, the entire side wall may be decorated and lightweight materials, such as aluminum, may be used. Such a container would also have the advantage of being able to be stacked or nested into one another during transport and storage of the empty containers, thus substantially reducing the storage space necessary for a given number of containers and substantially increasing the total number of containers which may be stored or transported in a given space volume.